Abstract

This essay forms part of an “elegiac symposium” on “what gets lost during paradigm shifts,” and it replies to an earlier contribution to that symposium, “Regarding Change at Ise-Jingu” by Jeffrey M. Perl (14, no. 2 [2008]: 208-20; DOI 10.1215/0961754X-2007-069]) . Andersen argues against or supplements Perl's contention that Japanese attitudes toward change differ radically from those that are standard in the West. Andersen expands on arguments made by Roland Barthes—an explicator and partisan of Japanese thought—to show that at least one Greek myth (that of the unchanging ship Argo) deals with change, originality, updating, fakes, and replication in a way similar to those standard in Japanese culture. Andersen then pursues his argument, as well, with respect to works by Rodin, Sade, and Leonardo da Vinci